Citizen G'kar: Musings on Earth

December 02, 2010

Gitmo Inmates Subjected to Medical Experimentation/Torture

WASHINGTON - JANUARY 11:  Members of Witness A...Image by Getty Images via @daylife
It's getting so that you can't tell the good guys from the bad guys. Sounds like Dr. Josef Mengele would consider these US Army physicians as colleagues.
The Defense Department forced all "war on terror" detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison to take a high dosage of a controversial antimalarial drug, mefloquine, an act that an Army public health physician called "pharmacologic waterboarding."
The US military administered the drug despite Pentagon knowledge that mefloquine caused severe neuropsychiatric side effects, including suicidal thoughts, hallucinations and anxiety. The drug was used on the prisoners whether they had malaria or not. 
The revelation, which has not been previously reported, was buried in  documents publicly released by the Defense Department (DoD) two years ago as part of the government's investigation into the June 2006 deaths of three Guantanamo detainees.
... All detainees arriving at Guantanamo in January 2002 were first given a treatment dosage of 1,250 mg of mefloquine, before laboratory tests were conducted to determine if they actually had the disease, according to a section of the DoD documents entitled "Standard Inprocessing Orders For Detainees." The 1,250 mg dosage is what would be given if the detainees actually had malaria. That dosage is five times higher than the prophylactic dose given to individauls to prevent the disease.
Maj. Remington Nevin, an Army public health physician, who formerly worked at the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center and has written extensively about mefloquine, said in an interview the use of mefloquine "in this manner ... is, at best, an egregious malpractice."
The government has exposed detainees "to unacceptably high risks of potentially severe neuropsychiatric side effects, including seizures, intense vertigo, hallucinations, paranoid delusions, aggression, panic, anxiety, severe insomnia, and thoughts of suicide," said Nevin, who was not speaking in an official capacity, but offering opinions as a board-certified, preventive medicine physician. "These side effects could be as severe as those intended through the application of 'enhanced interrogation techniques.'"

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November 23, 2010

FBI Wiretapping of Internet Users. "All Your Data Belongs to Us"

J. Edgar Hoover, director of the F.B.I, photog...Image via Wikipedia
Privacy on the internet no longer exists. Homeland Security are channeling J Edgar Hoover's privacy invasion tactics in a new round of Obama inspired intrusions and extensions of Bush's "War Powers". Still supposedly it is to track international terror, however the focus is now on US citizens.

by Tom Burghardt, GlobalResearch.ca
Never mind that the FBI, as Wired Magazine revealed three years ago, "has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any communications device."
Security journalist Ryan Singel reported that the Bureau's Digital Collection System Network or DCS-3000, a newer iteration of the Carnivore system of the 1990s, "connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet-telephony providers and cellular companies."
Documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit revealed that the system was created to "intercept personal communications services delivered via emerging digital technologies used by wireless carriers." A second system, Red Hook, collects "voice and data calls and then process and display the intercepted information."
...
While Microsoft doesn't charge the government for spying on their users, conveniently doing away with a messy paper trail in the process, Google receives $25 and Yahoo $29 from taxpayers for the privilege of being surveilled. Soghoian points out that "Google and Yahoo! may make more money from surveillance than they get directly from their email users. Basic Google and Yahoo! email accounts are free. Department of Justice documents show that telcos may charge as much as $2,000 for a pen register."
That 2006 report from the DoJ's Office of the Inspector General reported that to facilitate CALEA compliance, "Congress appropriated $500 million to reimburse carriers for the direct costs of modifying systems installed or deployed on or before January 1, 1995."
...
The bill, the Homeland Security Cyber and Physical Infrastructure Protection Act (HSCPIPA), has "other high-profile backers," including Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) and Yvette Clarke (D-NY), the outgoing chair of the Cybersecurity Subcommittee.
Last week, Antifascist Calling reported that Clarke proclaimed that "the likelihood of a cyberattack that could bring down our [electrical] grid is ... 100%. Our networks are already being penetrated as we stand here. We are already under attack."
Clarke, who raised some $267,938 in campaign contributions during the current election cycle, according to OpenSecrets.org, including tens of thousands of dollars from defense and security grifters such as Honeywell International, Dell, AT&T, Raytheon, Verizon, Boeing and General Dynamics, not to mention that sterling citizen and beacon of financial transparency, Goldman Sachs.
With a straight face, she asserted: "We must stop asking ourselves 'could this happen to us' and move to a default posture that acknowledges this fact and instead asks 'what can we do to protect ourselves'?"
With the introduction of HSCPIPA, we now have our answer!
Hardly slouches themselves when it comes to feeding at the corporate security trough, Harman raked in $654,787 from firms such as Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Raytheon and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), while Thompson grabbed$584,938 from firms like SAIC, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, all of whom do yeoman's work, as readers are well aware, to "keep us safe."
While no Republicans have signed onto the bill, the incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, ultra-rightist crazy, Rep. Peter King (R-NY), pulled down some $664,657 from his loyal constituents: General Dynamics, Goldman Sachs, AT&T, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, OpenSecrets told us.
...
As the American Civil Liberties Union pointed out last week in their denunciation of the FBI's sought-after legislation, "this proposal isn't simply applying the same sort of wiretap system we have for phones to the Internet; it would require reconfiguring and changing the nature of the Internet."
Laura W. Murphy, the Director of the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office said they "remain very concerned that this proposal is a clear recipe for abuse and will make it that much easier for the government to gain access to our most personal information."
"Americans," Murphy averred, "should not simply surrender their privacy and other fundamental values in the name of national security."




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November 11, 2010

Bill Moyers: "Welcome to the Plutocracy!"

There have been few journalists since Walter Cronkite that have had the credibility and moral high ground he enjoyed. There is one journalist that does, though he's been religated to PBS and has now twice retired. Bill Moyers is a man who everyone needs to hear. Excerpts of his speech at Boston University follow, and then the complete video.
...No, it’s “wage repression,” and it’s been happening in our country since around 1980. I must invoke some statistics here, knowing that statistics can glaze the eyes; but if indeed it’s the mark of a truly educated person to be deeply moved by statistics, as I once read, surely this truly educated audience will be moved by the recent analysis of tax data by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. They found that from 1950 through 1980, the share of all income in America going to everyone but the rich increased from 64 percent to 65 percent. Because the nation’s economy was growing handsomely, the average income for 9 out of l0 Americans was growing, too – from $17,719 to $30,941. That’s a 75 percent increase in income in constant 2008 dollars.
But then it stopped. Since 1980 the economy has also continued to grow handsomely, but only a fraction at the top have benefitted. The line flattens for the bottom 90% of Americans. Average income went from that $30,941 in 1980 to $31,244 in 2008. Think about that: the average income of Americans increased just $303 dollars in 28 years.
That’s wage repression.
...I doubt you’ll be surprised to learn that this “degenerate and unlovely age” – as one historian described it – served to inspire Karl Rove, the man said to be George W. Bush’s brain and now a mover and shaker of the money tree for the corporate-conservative complex (more on that later.) The extraordinary coupling of private and political power toward the close of the 19th century – the First Gilded Age – captured Rove’s interest, especially the role of Mark Hanna, the Ohio operative who became the first modern political fund-raiser.
...Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan also tried to warn us. He said President Reagan’s real strategy was to force the government to cut domestic social programs by fostering federal deficits of historic dimensions.
Watch this video on YouTube
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October 23, 2010

Toxic legacy of US assault on Fallujah 'worse than Hiroshima'

Depleted uranium munitions that were atomized when exploded, have been breathed by the inhabitants of Fallujah since 2004. Other 'secret' munitions forbidden by international law also were used. Freedom of the press and information in general has been assumed in the US for a long time. But recent history makes it clear, we are given only a selected part of the news that supports a US centric perspective. Thus 'secrets' like the condition of the people of Fallujah never sees mainstreet news in the US. Hat tip to Truth Out for the link.
Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.
Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents.
Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait.
...Researchers found a 38-fold increase in leukaemia, a ten-fold increase in female breast cancer and significant increases in lymphoma and brain tumours in adults. At Hiroshima survivors showed a 17-fold increase in leukaemia, but in Fallujah Dr Busby says what is striking is not only the greater prevalence of cancer but the speed with which it was affecting people.
Of particular significance was the finding that the sex ratio between newborn boys and girls had changed. In a normal population this is 1,050 boys born to 1,000 girls, but for those born from 2005 there was an 18 per cent drop in male births, so the ratio was 850 males to 1,000 females. The sex-ratio is an indicator of genetic damage that affects boys more than girls. A similar change in the sex-ratio was discovered after Hiroshima. 
More
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October 21, 2010

The Perfect Storm


Free enterprise is all but a goner in the US today. Our country is on the verge of becoming a plutocracy, government by Fat Cats, the Robber Barons that were stamped down before WWI, who virtually enslaved workers. They're baaaak!
It’s a perfect storm. And I’m not talking about the impending dangers facing Democrats. I’m talking about the dangers facing our democracy.
First, income in America is now more concentrated in fewer hands than it’s been in 80 years. Almost a quarter of total income generated in the United States is going to the top 1 percent of Americans.
The top one-tenth of one percent of Americans now earn as much as the bottom 120 million of us. Who are these people? With the exception of a few entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, they’re top executives of big corporations and Wall Street, hedge-fund managers, and private equity managers. They include the Koch brothers, whose wealth increased by billions last year, and who are now funding tea party candidates across the nation.
Which gets us to the second part of the perfect storm. A relatively few Americans are buying our democracy as never before. And they’re doing it completely in secret.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are pouring into advertisements for and against candidates  — without a trace of where the dollars are coming from. They’re laundered through a handful of groups. Fred Maleck, whom you may remember as deputy director of Richard Nixon’s notorious Committee to Reelect the President (dubbed Creep in the Watergate scandal), is running one of them. Republican operative Karl Rove runs another. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a third.
More 
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October 20, 2010

NAACP releases report accusing tea party groups of links to bigots

Sign for "Colored waiting room", Geo...Image via WikipediaThis of course isn't news to anyone who has been paying close attention to the Tea Party movement. But, here it is in.. er.. black and white...
Three months ago in Kansas City, the NAACP first raised charges of racism within the tea party movement. Today a report is being released accusing tea party groups of providing platforms to anti-Semites and other bigots.
“These groups and individuals are out there, and we ignore them at our own peril,” said NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous in a statement announcing the report. “They are speaking at tea party events, recruiting at rallies, and in some cases remain in the tea party leadership itself.”
...The new report describes what it calls links between tea party factions and white supremacist groups, anti-immigrant organizations and militias, according to a news release issued by the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, which wrote the document.
Not only have tea parties given platforms to extremists, the news release said, the movement is a recruiting ground for hard-core white nationalists who are “hoping to push these (white) protesters toward a more self-conscious and ideological white supremacy.”
The report, “Tea Party Nationalism: A Critical Examination of the Tea Party Movement and the Size, Scope, and Focus of Its National Factions,” was written by Leonard Zeskind and Devin Burghart of the Kansas City-based Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights.
Read more.

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October 18, 2010

UN Warns Mass Extinction Will Result If We Fail to Act on Global Warming

Achim SteinerImage via WikipediaSad that it comes to this before anything gets done. And with the resistance to any change, what future can the earth have? It is discouraging.
The world needs immediate action to stop the rapid loss of animal and plant species and their habitats, the United Nations warned Monday as a major summit on biodiversity began.
The 193 members of the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) convened for a 12-day conference in Nagoya, Japan, aimed at trying to avoid man-made mass extinction.
"This meeting is part of the world's efforts to address a very simple fact -- we are destroying life on earth,"said Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Program, reports Reuters.
"The time to act is now and the place to act is here," CBD executive secretary Ahmed Djoghlaf said, describing the summit as a "defining moment" in the history of mankind, reports the Agence France Presse.
Scientists say climate change and human population pressures are destroying ecosystems such as tropical forests and coral reefs as well as animal and plant species. A recent report by WWF warned that the world's 6.8 billion humans were living 50% beyond its sustainable means in 2007 and that, at current rates, a second Earth will be needed by 2030 to meet the planet's needs.
The U.N. delegates plan to set a new target for 2020 for curbing species loss and discuss how to boost funding to assist poor countries in this task. Countries have not met a prior U.N. convention target.
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October 14, 2010

Juan Cole: The Story Behind the Chilian Mine Collapse

Simplified world mining map (click to enlarge)Image via Wikipedia
1. What were the miners mining? (A.: Gold and copper).
2. Did the high price of gold and the fact that the mining company was close to bankruptcy cause the company executives to cut corners?
3. negligence?
4. Why did the San Estaban mining company reopen the mine so quickly after an earlier tunnel collapse severed the leg of a mine worker?
5. Why is there no accountability for the mine owners?
6. Is George W. Bush-style deregulation of the mining industry by the Chilean governmentpart of the problem here?
7. [pdf] What is the influence of big gold and copper corporations over US policy?
8. Are copper and gold mine owners stronger in relation to workers and have they escaped government regulation because the US engineered a coup in 1973 to destroy the ChileanLeft?
9. Was the San Estaban mining company’s ability to marginalize the union and to disregard input from the workers rooted in American-imposed corporate privilege?
More.
10. In other words, was the trapping of these workers in the first place Richard Nixon’s and Henry Kissinger’s fault?
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October 06, 2010

September 27, 2010

Israelis "Executed" US Citizen Furkan Dogan

 The UN report found that 6 persons where murdered execution style by Israeli Defense Forces on the Mavi Marmara on May 31, 2010 when activists tried to land supplies to break blockade in Gaza. Just yesterday, another ship carrying Jewish activists from Israel, Germany, the United States and Britain has set sail for Gaza from Cyprus.
The report of the fact-finding mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla released last week shows conclusively, for the first time, that US citizen Furkan Dogan and five Turkish citizens were murdered execution-style by Israeli commandos.
The report reveals that Dogan, the 19-year-old US citizen of Turkish descent, was filming with a small video camera on the top deck of the Mavi Marmara when he was shot twice in the head, once in the back and in the left leg and foot and that he was shot in the face at point blank range while lying on the ground.
The report says Dogan had apparently been "lying on the deck in a conscious or semi-conscious, state for some time" before being shot in his face.
The forensic evidence that establishes that fact is "tattooing around the wound in his face," indicating that the shot was "delivered at point blank range."  The report describes the forensic evidence as showing that "the trajectory of the wound, from bottom to top, together with a vital abrasion to the left shoulder that could be consistent with the bullet exit point, is compatible with the shot being received while he was lying on the ground on his back."
Based on both "forensic and firearm evidence," the fact-finding panel concluded that Dogan's killing and that of five Turkish citizens by the Israeli troops on the Mavi Marmari May 31 "can be characterized as extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions." (See Report [.pdf] Page 38, Section 170)

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September 23, 2010

UN's Gaza flotilla probe finds Israeli soldiers committed 'willful killing'

The Israelis got a slap on the hand today from the UN. Unfortunately, there is little that will come from this. Another investigation with Turkish and Israeli representatives report is not yet available. That one may have some impact.
A United Nations Human Rights Council investigation concluded that the Israeli military broke international laws during a raid on a Turkish ship that was part of an aid flotilla trying to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza.
The council’s report, announced Wednesday, was met positively by Turkey but dismissed by Israel as “biased." The report is separate from a UN flotilla inquiry backed by Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, which includes both an Israeli and a Turkish representative and is seen as carrying more weight than the UNHRC's investigation – but has not yet concluded its work.
In a 56-page report (pdf), the UNHCR's three-member panel wrote that Israeli commandos had committed war crimes during their May 31 raid of the Turkish aid ship the MV Mavi Marmara that left nine Turkish, pro-Palestinian activists dead. Although Israel contends that its soldiers acted in self-defense, the council found that their response was “disproportionate” and that soldiers exercised an “unacceptable level of brutality.”
IN PICTURES: The Gaza flotilla and the aftermath of the Israeli naval raid
“There is clear evidence to support prosecutions of the following crimes within the terms of article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention: willful killing; torture or inhuman treatment; wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health,” wrote the report's authors.
The council also found that Israel’s blockade of Gaza is “unlawful” because of the humanitarian crisis, reports the BBC.
 Continued.
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September 08, 2010

Hellegers: American Income Inequality is the Cause of our Crisis

The Tea Party movement is just a clever disguise for an oilman to control America. Inequality has always be a moral issue, now it is clearly an economic issue. The rich have seized control of policy making in the US and they may again seize control of government in the next election. As usual, Juan Cole has it right.

Informed Comment

Plutarch, writing almost 2,000 years ago, told us that “an imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.”
Below is a chart that shows the course of income imbalance over the last 93 years in the U.S. If it showed the course of net worth imbalance, it would be much more dramatic. If it showed data for the top tenth of one percent– not just the top ten percent– it would be extraordinarily dramatic.
Inter alia, the chart shows that both the Great Depression of the ’30s and the present crisis were immediately preceded by great buildups in inequality. When ordinary people lack the wealth to buy things– houses for example–the system crashes.
There’s also a lot of data that show that economic equality conduces, quite literally, to the health of society. The correlation between equality and most measures of well-being is stronger than the correlation between wealth and well-being. See Richard G. Wilkinson & Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level (2009). For a good review of that book, see David Runciman in the London Review of Books, Oct. 22, 2009, .
Still, the rich consistently try to destroy egalitarianism, because for their segment, inequality is fine. It means increasingly desperate people trying increasingly hard to serve the rich. The rich also try to destroy the political means by which the rest of society might seek relief, which is exactly Plutarch’s point. Witness the rise of the present-day Tea Parties. A recent article in the New Yorker describes how the Koch brothers– Texas billionaires– have lavishly financed that movement.
In 1980 Ronald Reagan managed to break the egalitarian consensus that had held since FDR. (See the chart.) The key was playing on racial divisions. Reagan’s first campaign speech was in Philadelphia, Misssissippi. That town is famous for one thing only. It’s where three civil rights workers were lynched and murdered in the 1960s. Reagan’s target audience didn’t miss his message. Social justice was cast in terms of giveaways to demonized blacks– mythologized welfare queens in Cadillacs. Reagan’s ascendancy, by his exploitation of the race issue, is described by Thomas B. & Mary D. Edsall in Chain Reaction (1992). Thomas Edsall, until his retirement, was a reporter for the Washington Post.
The U.S. is now more unequal than a number of countries in Latin America. When I was younger it was accepted wisdom that those countries would never get anywhere until they solved the inequality problem.
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August 31, 2010

Our Leadership Have Been Idiots about the Economy

The long standing macro-economic model that has been the mainstay of training in the 20th century, the Keynesian model, predicts current events in our economy. Yet everyone tries to hold onto the long repudiated "supply-side" model that took hold of politics in the 80s. The result is that we are headed for deflation, and if the Republicans get there way a new Great Depression, with a "D".
Brother, Can You Paradigm? - NYTimes.com: "Brother, Can You Paradigm?
A few months back one of my original mentors in economics — someone who got his graduate training in the pre-fresh-water era — asked me whether there was anything about the current crisis that required fundamentally new analysis. We agreed that there wasn’t."
Poor mother and children during the Great Depr...Image via WikipediaThis is one of the untold tales of the mess we’re in. Contrary to what you may have heard, there’s very little that’s baffling about our problems — at least not if you knew basic, old-fashioned macroeconomics. In fact, someone who learned economics from the original 1948 edition of Samuelson’s textbook would feel pretty much at home in today’s world. If economists seem totally at sea, it’s because they have carefully unlearned the old wisdom. If policy has failed, it’s because policy makers chose not to believe their own models.
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August 30, 2010

Anti-mosque sentiment rages far from Ground Zero

Number of terrorist incidents for 2009 (Januar...Image via Wikipedia
Terrorism raises it's ugly head in the US. Obviously, protests about the Mosque placed in Lower Manhattan has inspired American terrorism.
Anti-mosque sentiment rages far from Ground Zero - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com:
"Federal officials are investigating a fire that started overnight at the site of a new Islamic center in a Nashville suburb....
The arsonists undoubtedly will be happy to tell you how much they hate Terrorism. And how there's a War on Christianity underway in the U.S. The harm from these actions are not merely the physical damage they cause, but also the well-grounded fear it imposes on a minority of the American population. If you launch a nationwide, anti-Islamic campaign in Lower Manhattan based on the toxic premise that Muslims generally are responsible for 9/11 -- and spend a decade expanding American wars on one Muslim country after the next -- this is the inevitable, and obviously dangerous, outcome."
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Prosecutors say Croatia ethnically cleansed Serbs: Just War is an Oxymoron

Caricature of the croatian general Ante Gotovi...Image via WikipediaMy point made again. Croatia is said to have intended ethnic cleansing even when they told the troops not to. Here is a subtle acknowledgement of my thesis that good warriors are induced by depraved conditions to commit atrocities.
Prosecutors say Croatia ethnically cleansed Serbs - World News | Tri-City Herald : Mid-Columbia news:
"Croatian forces shelled civilians and torched their homes in a deliberate effort to expel tens of thousands of Serbs during a lightning 1995 campaign to seize back land occupied early in the Balkan wars, U.N. war crimes prosecutors said Monday.
The ethnic cleansing allegations came as prosecution lawyers at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal summed up their case against Gen. Ante Gotovina, who commanded the blitz known as Operation Storm, and two other Croatian generals.
The case is unusual because prosecutors insist the generals are guilty despite having issued orders to troops not to commit crimes. They say the generals never intended the orders to be followed."
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August 29, 2010

The Empathic Civilisation

Ignore the incredible leaps of logic about heaven being without empathy. Otherwise, this guy has it right. This is where humanity will go if we survive this next 100 years.


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August 28, 2010

Just War is an Oxymoron

Map of eastern Democratic Republic of CongoImage via Wikipedia
War asks human beings to act without regard to their values. By definition, they act in a depraved manner. The rules of war require a soldier to behave within a limited set of depraved behaviors. This paradox creates a completely impossible situation for human beings who are not accustom to containing depravity once unleashed. So it's not surprising war crimes occur. Nor is it at all surprising that the Tutsis sought revenge on the Hutus who committed genocide on Tutsies.

BBC News - UN DR Congo 'genocide' draft report - key excerpts: "Experts say it is the first rigorous investigation - the researchers required two independent sources for each of the 600 incidents documented in their 545-page report - into alleged atrocities committed in eastern DR Congo between 1993 and 2003. Rwanda's Tutsi-dominated government has dismissed the claims as 'rubbish'."
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August 01, 2010

How we subsidize fossil fuels

Image via Wikipedia

Here is a story that has finally leaked out of obscurity. Oil and coal and other fossil fuels are subsidized MUCH more than renewable energy. That is clearly not in the tax payers long range interest, yet that is who pays the bill.  In the short range, it may make gas cheaper, but it also makes for MASSIVE profits for oil companies.
This is a little old, but I ran across it on Jon Taplin's blog recently and I think it does a good job of making an important point—fossil fuel, as an industry, isn't self supporting. No matter where we get our energy from, we're propping up production with tax dollars.
Couple things to keep in mind with this graph:
Not all fossil fuel subsidies are evil. (Frankly, I think we can drop the fossil fuels part and say "not all subsidies are evil", but I digress.) The Environmental Law Institute—who compiled the research and created this graphic—points out a great example: The Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. That's calculated under subsidies to fossil fuels. It's by no means a big part of fossil fuel subsidies, but it's there.
Worldwide Renewable energy, existing capacitie...This accounting doesn't include all spending. For instance, there are programs that, arguably, spend money as a direct result of the fossil fuel industry, but that aren't technically subsidies. The Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, say, or, more controversially, money spent on military campaigns at least partially influenced by a desire to stabilize/defend/friendly-fy oil-producing countries.
Read the full paper this graph is based on. See the full graph with footnotes.

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